ScienceBusiness ACES winner Novacem closes Green Cement Bond with Lafarge

Funding

ScienceBusiness ACES award winner Novacem Ltd, the carbon negative cement company, has attracted leading cement, concrete, aggregates and gypsum manufacturer Lafarge as the first subscriber to its Green Cement Bond.

The Novacem Green Cement Bond is a novel commercial and financial approach to working with major cement manufacturers to accelerate the development and commercialisation of Novacem’s carbon negative cement. The Bond is for £1 million, through a combination of non-refundable engineering fees and convertible loan notes. It is expected that subscribers to the bond will also participate in a first round funding currently being planned by Novacem.

Novacem’s carbon negative cement, based on magnesium oxide, offers a scalable alternative to current carbon intensive production. No carbon emissions are released from the magnesium silicate raw material used, and overall more CO2 is absorbed than emitted during production.

Novacem will use the money from the bond and the funding to accelerate its development programme and construct and operate a semi-commercial plant producing up to 25,000 tonnes per year, to be co-located with an existing cement plant.

Bond subscribers will work with Novacem in the development of the plant and share experience in the production of carbon negative cement. They will also have early access to plant output for testing, development, certification, pilot projects and initial sales.

In additional, they will have the option to build and operate the first commercial volume Novacem plants under license. Thereafter, Novacem expects to roll out other commercial volume plants to the subscribers, as well as to other cement companies.

Stuart Evans, Chairman of Novacem, said, “We have always known that we would need to work closely with the cement industry to urgently tackle, together, the very serious carbon emissions problems that the industry faces. We couldn't have hoped for a better first cement industry partner than Lafarge.”

David McMeekin, Chairman of London Technology Fund, which invested in Novacem last year, said the company is “an excellent example of the world class technology being developed at London’s universities.”